Month: September 2001

Upstate New York will soon be the home of a clean energy business park. It’ll be one of the first business parks in the U.S. specifically designed for companies that develop clean energy technology. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brodie has more:

Transcript

Upstate New York will soon be the home of a clean energy business park. It’ll be one of the first business parks in the U.S. specifically designed for companies that develop clean energy technology. The Great Lakes Consortium’s Mark Brodie reports.

The Saratoga Technology Energy Park, or step, will be housed on land owned by the New York state energy research and development authority.

Nyserda President, William Flynn, says the agency had been looking for a way to use the 280 acres for several years.

“Maybe this is a little pie in the sky, but I hope to envision something along the lines of what happened out in the Northwest and out in California in Silicon Valley. I think NYS has a great opportunity to cluster these new clean energy technology businesses in one location so they can all feed off of each other.”

Flynn expects both the energy technology sector, and the market for clean energy technology to grow in the near future.

He says the state is courting companies that develop and promote the use of alternative forms of energy…including solar and wind power. For the Great Lakes Consortium, I’m Mark Brodie.

Transcript

A Canadian environmental group is claiming that nuclear waste is leaking from a dump on the shores of Lake Ontario. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports.

The Port Granby nuclear waste site sits on a bluff overlooking Lake Ontario just east of Toronto. The environmental group Lake Ontario Keeper collected samples of treated wastewater from the site as well as untreated runoff. They say an independent lab found illegal levels of uranium, arsenic and other chemicals in both samples.

Norm Rubin, the group’s director of nuclear research, says it’s time the government stepped in.

Sprawl affects urban and rural residents of every Great Lakes state. Rapid development continues to swallow farmland and leave impoverished urban cores in its wake. But one Great Lakes mayor believes there’s still time to preserve land and revive cities. Mayor John Logie shares this commentary:

Transcript

Sprawl affects urban and rural residents of every Great Lakes state. Rapid development continues to swallow farmland and leave impoverished urban cores in its wake. But one Great Lakes mayor believes there’s still time to preserve land and revive cities. Mayor John Logie shares this commentary.

Urban sprawl is alive and well in Grand Rapids, my hometown. The term refers to the insidious way that webs of suburbs, manufacturing plants, etc., are expanding in unplanned, ever-widening circles around our city. Such sprawl results in longer commutes, pollution, and the loss of undeveloped land. The American Farmland Trust reports that 70% of the country’s prime farmland is now in the path of rapid development. On the list of 30 of the most sprawling cities in the entire United States, Grand Rapids, which has experienced a 48% increase in its urban area between 1990 and 1996, ranks right in the middle, behind such hyper-growth communities as Las Vegas, Austin, and Tucson, but well ahead of Cleveland, Chicago, and Portland in our rate of sprawl increase.

This Land-use change has rarely been done in a responsible fashion. Some sprawl apologists say what we’ve ended up with is that’s the American Dream, and any problems are easy to fix. They say there’s plenty of land left in America. They say congestion would go away if we just build more roads. But sprawl matters. Pollsters say it’s the most important issue in the Country.

Distress about urban sprawl arises from many factors: loss of open space, traffic congestion, economic segregation, a lack of affordable housing, and a lost sense of community. According to Harvard University political scientist Robert Putnam, the longer people spend in traffic, the less likely they are to be involved in their community and family.

To solve these problems, it takes a combination of land conservation and real free market economics, which can actually provide smaller lots for those who want them. However, many communities try to maintain what they believe are high property values by allowing only large-lot homes to be built. This effectively excludes several types of households, including singles, some empty nesters, single-parents, and the elderly, along with lower-income people. And the favored “middle-class family” with kids, today represents just 25% of new homebuyers. Only 11% of U.S. households are “traditional” families with children and just one wage earner. One size no longer fits us all.

Here’s what we need now.

We need smaller houses in walkable clusters, town homes in real “towns,” lofts in vital urban neighborhoods, and affordable housing just about anywhere. The development of compact communities that offer urban amenities and street life will show that the market actually supports more density and more housing diversity—not less. But we’re not building communities like those; communities that can help reduce many symptoms of sprawl, including traffic. Instead, we’re just building new roads. But for every 10% increase in new freeway miles, a 9% increase in traffic is generated within 5 years as sprawl continues. You just can’t build your way out of gridlock. More importantly, today we can no longer afford to keep building new freeways. The key is building more walkable communities. All this depends on promoting different land-use patterns, and not just building new roads.

Property rights advocates argue against regional planning, or any planning for that matter. They say that people should have a right to develop their properties as they please. As a historic preservationist, I have heard that for years. But what if one person’s development decision adversely impacts another’s property, or the whole neighborhood, or the whole region? What if certain choices require more public tax dollars to pay for infrastructure and services than others? At the regional level, it is public dollars that enable development on private property. Without highways, roads, sewers, water systems, and public services, development cannot occur. Therefore, we must use the tool of government spending appropriately – and seek out and implement the most cost-effective public investments which creatively and positively support growth, but discourage sprawl. My name is John Logie, I’m the Mayor of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The "Benthic Explorer" now sits on the bottom
of Lake Superior and provides live pictures of its
underwater world. Photo by Chris Julin.

If you’ve ever been curious about what goes on at the bottom of the world’s largest lake, you can take a look for yourself – and you don’t even have to get wet. A device called the “fishcam” is sitting under 35 feet of water in Lake Superior and it’s now sending pictures to the Internet. Researchers say it’s the only permanently mounted underwater camera in the world sending live images back to shore. The pictures are fun to look at, but researchers say they’re also useful to biologists who study underwater life in the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris Julin has the story:
http://environmentreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2001/09/julin.mp3

Transcript

If you’ve ever been curious about what goes on at the bottom of the world’s largest lake, you can take a look for yourself — and you don’t even have to get wet. A device called the “fish cam” is sitting under 35-feet of water in Lake Superior and it’s now sending pictures to the Internet. Researchers say it’s the only permanently mounted underwater camera in the world sending live images back to shore. The pictures are fun to look at, but researchers say they’re also useful to biologists who study underwater life in the Great Lakes.

The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris Julin has the story.

A team of researchers put the camera underwater more than a year ago. It sits on the lake bottom, several miles from Duluth. The researchers have watched pictures from the “fish cam” for months, but now, anyone with a computer hooked to the Internet can get a scuba diver’s view of the bottom of Lake Superior. The research team recently gathered at the Great Lakes Aquarium in Duluth to unveil the “fish cam” website. Fish expert Greg Bambenek has had the fish cam hooked-up to the computer at his house, but at the aquarium, he watched the fish cam on the screen of a laptop.

“That’s streaming out on the web right now. It’s updated every ten seconds. The fish there are mullet. At night, we have a micro-cam that brings the zooplankton into close focus, and at times you’ll see the mullet eating the zooplankton.”

Those zooplanktons are tiny animals called “water fleas.” They’re fractions of an inch long –far too small to show up through the fish cam’s standard lens. But Bambanek says it’s a different story at night, when the fish cam switches to a magnifying lens, and the computer screen comes alive with little critters.

“Leptodora is the large one. Then you’ll see little copepods that kind of look like Pokemon creatures with the antennas coming off their head, and they’re smaller. They’re only a couple millimeters, so you wouldn’t be able to see them if you were diving in the water.”

The people gathered to see the fish cam’s first Internet images had to settle for a murky picture. A strong northeast wind was blowing in off the lake, kicking up big waves, and stirring up the bottom. The researchers say big waves make for blurry pictures. Even so, lots of fish were visible in the frame. The fish might be crowding in because researchers are releasing fish scent through a special tube attached t the camera. But photographer Doug Hajicek says it’s surprising how many fish swim past even without the fish scent. Hajicek designed and built the underwater camera, and he’s been watching a private feed from the fish cam for months.

“This lake is extremely alive. There is a food chain that is so delicate and tiny. Everybody thinks of Lake Superior as just a sterile body of water, and we’re hoping to change that.”

Some of the fish that swim into view are called ruffe, a non-native species that’s invading the Great Lakes. Researcher Greg Bambenek says it is surprising see so many ruffe here, six miles from Duluth. He says biologists believed ruffe stayed closer to harbors. Bambenek says that’s just one example of the valuable information about life in the Great Lakes that scientists can get from the fish cam.

“We can take freeze-frame, count the number of zooplankton, count the number of fish, and also look at it over time, and also see what does a northeaster do? What do the fish do? Do they leave? Do they come back? What does water temperature do? We have a temperature sensor down there. We also have a hydrophone so we can hear what’s going on underneath the water. So, it is a research tool.”

Bambenek says the research team learned a lot during the year it took to get the camera up and running on the Internet. He says the team is planning to put another camera in Lake Superior, farther from shore, and hopes to put a third camera somewhere on the floor of the ocean.

You can see images from the Lake Superior fish cam at Duluth.com/fishcam.

For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Chris Julin in Duluth.

Related Links

This levy currently separates the biggest farm in
Illinois (on the left) from the floodwaters of the Illinois River (on the
right). The Nature Conservancy is planning to turn the 7,600 acre
farm into one of the biggest Midwest wetland restoration projects ever.

Transcript

A conservation group is planning a wetland restoration project that will be one of the biggest ever in the Midwest. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports:

The Nature Conservancy has purchased the biggest farm in Illinois, and is planning to convert the land into a wetland. The seventy six hundred acre plot of land in Central Illinois is attracting attention from researchers from around the region. Joy Zedler is an Ecology professor at the University of Wisconsin. She says the project will be significant.

“That fact that it is large already puts it on the map. And the fact that we could experiement with reintroducing rare species and finding the conditions that facilitate their growth is exciting.”

The Nature Conservancy is facing some challenges with the project that is less than a half a mile from the Illinois River. Critics say the polluted waters of the river will make it nearly impossible to recreate a natural wetland. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jonathan Ahl.

This levy currently separates the biggest farm in
Illinois (on the left) from the floodwaters of the Illinois River (on the
right). The Nature Conservancy is planning to turn the 7,600 acre
farm into one of the biggest Midwest wetland restoration projects ever.

Lost wetlands are restored for a number of reasons. Sometimes, they replace a wetlands area lost because of construction or farming. Typically those projects are small in scope. Now a conservation group is looking to create an entire ecosystem in the Midwest through a massive wetland restoration program. The plan is garnering attention from scientists as a new model for how to return land to its natural state. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports:
http://environmentreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2001/09/ahl.mp3

Transcript

Lost wetlands are restored for a number of reasons. Sometimes they replace a wetlands area lost somewhere else because of construction or agriculture. But typically these projects are small in scope. Now a conservation group is looking to create an entire ecosystem in the Midwest through a massive wetland restoration program. The plan is garnering attention from scientists as a new model for how to return land to its natural state. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports.

(Ambient sound – the farm)

Tractors are rolling across the Wilder farm in Central Illinois, tending to fields lined with rows of corn and soybeans. This plot of land is 76-hundrd acres, or nearly twelve square miles. It’s the biggest farm in the entire state. But it won’t be a farm for much longer. The Nature Conservancy has purchased the land, and hopes to make the area one of the biggest Midwest wetland restoration projects ever. The group hopes the Emiquon Wildlife Refuge will make improvements to the land ranging from creating a new stop for migrating birds, to improving the quality of the Illinois River that is the source of drinking water for hundreds of thousands of people. Joy Zedler is an Ecology Professor at the University of Wisconsin. She says the size of this project creates a unique opportunity to reintroduce extinct plants once native to the area.

“If you have a wetland the size of this table, and you want to restore an endangered species, very likely you wont be able to find the right conditions to support it. But if you have 7600 acres, somewhere in that site may well be the combination of conditions that can support that species.”

Zedler says bringing native plants back to the area can provide food and habitat for a variety of animals and insects that were once native to that region, and improve the health of the region’s ecosystem for miles in every. One major advantage Emiquon has is the entire farm is surrounded by a levy. That means one hole in the levy could allow the area to be a contained flood plain for the river. Rip Sparks is a professor at the University of Illinois. He says allowing that to happen has the potential to bring a wide variety of plants and animals back to the river area. That’s because it would create a seasonal flood plain.

“The spring flood lasts long enough that the organisms have adapted to utilize it for spawning and feeding areas. And the birds have used it as feeding areas as they make their migrations. So it seems very important that river be connected to the flood plain.”

But not everyone is excited about the plans to turn Emiquon into a wetland. Tom Edwards is an activist who has studied the Illinois River region for decades. He is one of several environmentalists that say all of the excitement about the project is mis-founded. Edwards says the waters of the nearby Illinois River are so polluted, that if one drop becomes part of the Emiquon site, all the talk of reintroducing native plant and animal species will become moot.

“Nothing on the Illinois River has any vegetation on it. It’s a toxic waste. The fish can hardly survive. If they let the river water in, it will create another mud hole. It’s not a way to cleanse the river, and we would lose a valuable asset for the future.”

Edwards says Emiquon can be a separate, stand alone lake that protects some wildlife and plants. But he says it will never be the grand experiment in wetland restoration that some claim it will be. Many scientists counter Edward’s argument by pointing out that wetlands can be excellent filters for pollutants, and improve the quality of nearby bodies of water. And the Nature Conservancy says it is aware of the challenges of creating a wetland so close to a less than healthy river. And that, says the Conservancy’s Michael Rueter, is what makes this site ideal. Because it’s enclosed by levies, whatever is done here can be reversed. If opening the site to the river causes problems, the levy can simply be closed up again, and something else can be tried.

“Any action that we take will be reversible. So we’re not taking down levies or lowering the heights of levies. Because we want to be able to reverse this and adapt as we learn more information.”

Rueter says one option would be to install a gate in the levy, so they could control the amount of water that comes into Emiquon. Scientists could than closely monitor the effect of adding River water to the site. Reuter says the Nature Conservancy hasn’t decided how it will approach restoring the site just yet. The group has time to think about it. Part of the purchase agreement gives the former owners the right to continue to farm the land for up to five more years. But when it does become a restoration project, it will likely have the attention of activists and researchers around all of the Midwest. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jonathan Ahl.